Grace Between the Raindrops

It has been an incongruous spring and early summer. Instead of sweet-smelling evenings and light-filled days,  rain has wrapped round us like late fall and the evenings dim with cloud coverage and cold temperatures meant for blankets and cups of tea instead of ceiling fans and lemonade.

We're a little bit tired of it, wearied of it, really. My wardrobe of new skirts and patent leather sling backs seems to mock me each morning and I have to resist my goose fleshed arms reach for turtlenecks and wool pants and yes, even boots.

I know it's the 8th straight day of rain and 55 degree mornings, but today I could not take one more day of black and brown and put on a skirt - an off-white button down the front canvas straight skirt, with a print top and pink short sleeved cardigan. I did put on patent leather flats and sighed over the pretty canvas ones that would have gotten ruined in the rain. My bare legs were a bit wet and cold, but the pink sweater was commented on by more than a few spring-starved souls.

One of my concessions to working for a living (as if I have to deem to concess to a life-sustaining activity) is to make my office a place of comfort. For years I believed that a working woman needed to have a utilitarian, impersonal space designed to impart only the fiercest confidence in clients and superiors. There would be no breaching of the professional aura by doodads and gizmos or homey touches.

Now, I no longer care. I am who I am and if I have to spend 56 hours a week in a room, I better be surrounded by photos of loved ones, color, my own paintings, a tray of shells, pretty boxes, and other bits and pieces of art I've picked up here and there. I have my "Beach" fragrance beads that a lovely blog reader sent me.

One of my absolute musts is a desk lamp. I cannot stand fluorescent lights. A desk lamp's ambient light makes all the difference between feeling imprisoned and feeling if not at home, then at least in a place of my choosing.

I am blessed with an office with a wall of windows and my desk lamp, although small, is usually enough. These gloomy mornings, however, my little lamp barely penetrates the darkness but I am stubborn in not switching on the above the head horror of humming, white jailhouse lighting.

Each dark, rainy morning this week, someone has walked by and wondered aloud if I was there - oh yes, I see you now, they kid, peering as if with a flashlight into a rainforest. I had to resist the urge to conform and switch on the ceiling light but stuck to my guns.   Since 99.9% of our time is spent on laptops, there's really very little need for other light sources, unless you are the type who forsakes coffee and may be found asleep and drooling over a keyboard in a darkened room.

We moved into these offices two months ago and since  I brought in my little lamp, a white metal carved base with a pretty chintz fabric shade,  it's drawn a lot of attention from other women on the staff. One by one, pretty lamps have sprouted on desks up and down the hallway.

One attorney has an elegant Tiffany inspired light that casts jeweled shadows across her desk. Another has a large, lime green, barrel-shaded contemporary that I lust after.  In further gentrification of our spaces, house plants have become popular.   A huge rubber tree was seen ambling across the floor, its owner trudging behind it, completely hidden by the leaves like an explorer on safari.

I, myself, have killed a lavender plant and ivy plant - the type that a nuclear war could not spoil - in the space of six weeks and I am plantless at the moment. I have decided that rather than buy another potted plant, one that I will promptly forget to water and find dried like hay after I return from vacation, I will wait and buy a small ficus. Is there a season for ficus? Will I find it turning sickly and yellow and need a rake? Probably, but it will be a new office topic of conversation and I predict many more small trees foresting our office floor.